


The Knife's Edge

by sakuuya



Category: Battle for London in the Air (Roleplay)
Genre: Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canon-typical Dr. J, Gen, I'm so sorry Oscar, cyborg zombies, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27743155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuuya/pseuds/sakuuya
Summary: The prosthetics that keep Oscar alive are failing, and unfortunately, he only knows one person who can fix him.
Kudos: 4
Collections: Battle for London-in-the-Air Canon





	The Knife's Edge

The malfunctions started out small—an unexpected twitch of his hand, a bit of blurring at the edge of his vision. A lifetime ago, he wouldn’t have even registered them as concerning, just a normal part of life. Oscar, though, had lived with an unchanging, not-quite-living body for just over a decade. Any intrusion on that stasis, however minor, was a cause for concern, but he tried to put it out of his mind. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, so time spent worrying was wasted time.

Not that he wanted for time. Aside from the occasional bug in his systems, he hadn’t aged a day since he’d woken up in that laboratory. And he hadn’t had a purpose since he‘d fled from Rebecca and Tristan, more than a decade ago. Mostly it had just been a string of odd jobs, physical labor to give himself something to do, if not a reason to do it. Once in a while (not frequently enough), he was able to put his real skills to use though minor acts of vigilantism—returning stolen property, stopping an assault, things of that nature. 

Those were the only moments he felt alive any more. The rest of the time, he was just a moving body, perpetual motion to stop him from dwelling too long on the past.

But the degradation spread, accelerated even, like he was a normal man growing old or, perhaps more accurately, like he was an engine nearing the end of its usefulness. Oscar remembered, through the haze of his rebirth, Lady Sterling saying something about reanimated mechanicals being eternal. Showed what _she_ knew. 

Of course, any spiteful joy he might have taken in Lady Sterling being wrong was spoiled by the fact that it was _his_ body suddenly decaying and by the horrible memory of her death.

Oscar was working as a rubbish-hauler in MITA when he collapsed. His sense of smell hadn't come back from the dead with him, so the job was a good fit. No one looked twice at the garbage man. Even when his legs spasmed and gave out under him, sending him crashing into someone's bins, it merited only brief glances from passersby. They probably thought he was drunk.

He _hoped_ they thought he was drunk. Better that than anyone taking a closer interest and, perhaps, realizing the truth.

Oscar willed his body to start working again, but he knew all too well that his mind didn't always have the final word on that matter. He managed to pull himself into an alley and drag himself upright against a wall. Still, his limbs convulsed and then fell dead sporadically, and his vision swam. It had never been this bad before.

 _At least his mind was still his own._ He clung to that thought like a drowning man as he tried to figure out a solution, to stop himself from panicking. There was no way for him to figure out what was wrong on his own. He just didn't have the technical knowledge, even when his body was listening to him. And anyone who did have enough experience with mechanical prosthetics to help him would be sure to notice his unliving state.

There _was_ someone, right here in MITA, who already understood what Oscar was and would know how to help him, if anyone possibly would. The last time Oscar had seen him, he had used that knowledge to steal Oscar's free will and use him as a murder weapon. But what other choice did Oscar have? Let his body continue to decay until he was just a mind trapped forever in a rusty, useless shell? Compared to that damnation, even asking Dr. Jhandir for help was palatable.

Oscar stayed in the alley until nightfall, keeping himself tucked into the lengthening shadows as best he could when his body only occasionally obeyed him. He staggered out once it was dark enough to hide what a wreck he was. Though he tried to mentally project the image that he was just stumbling drunk, he feared he looked more like a bodach. At least no one tried to make trouble as he made his slow, awkward way toward the fashionable part of MITA.

Of course he knew where Dr. Jhandir lived, the better to avoid the man. At the same time, it disgusted him to know that the doctor was successful and comfortable, even renowned for his skill with prosthetics, after what he'd made Oscar do. Keeping tabs on Dr. Jhandir was like wearing a hair shirt. It meant he never forgot what he had done—what he'd been made to do.

The fence encircling Dr. Jhandir's property would have been easily surmountable under normal conditions. Oscar had a mind to try it anyway, even with his malfunctioning body, until he saw the sign on the gate warning that it was electrified. 

_Shit._ A strong shock could kill him outright. There went his plans to go in through the front door. Eventually, Oscar's slow, painful reconnaissance led him to a neighbor's tree that overhung Dr. Jhandir's wall. He was ordinarily a nimble climber, but with his damned body on the blink, it took him several graceless attempts to lift himself into the branches.

His drop into Dr. Jhandir's yard was just as inept. The fall was high enough that an ordinary man would break some bones, but this was one instance where Oscar's strange physiology was a boon. Although he landed with an ungodly thud, he was no worse off, physically, than he had been before.

Even the noise of his descent turned out to be fortunate: while he was still trying to pull himself into a standing (or at least crawling) position, Dr. Jhandir himself came out into the garden, brandishing a gun and some kind of handheld electric light.

"Who's there? Show yourself at once!"

 _Lord above_. In the intervening years, Oscar had forgotten what a pompous arse the doctor sounded like. He tried to reply, but the only thing that left his mouth was a hiss.

That was least enough to alert Dr. Jhandir to his location. Oscar didn't blink as the bright electric light hit his face. 

"Oscar Sherry?" Dr. Jhandir sounded scared now, as well he should. Oscar could have come for revenge at any time. He hadn’t done so only because he had to believe he was a good person. He couldn't expect a worm like the doctor to understand that.

Dr. Jhandir edged closer, holding up his gun despite the fact that he of all people must know that it couldn’t kill Oscar. Oscar managed to roll up onto his hands and knees, but one of his arms went dead almost immediately, and his head thunked back down onto the flowerbed he was crushing.

It certainly wasn’t dignified, but it seemed to intrigue Dr. Jhandir, who squatted down just out of Oscar’s reach and watched him thrash with a curious, pitiless expression. “Oh dear, what’s wrong with you?”

“Hlp,” Oscar managed to grind out through his clenched teeth. It wasn’t much of a response, but Dr. Jhandir nodded anyway.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, unless you can roll off of my violets.”

The doctor stood and disappeared back into his house. By the time he returned, pushing a gurney, Oscar had gotten himself back under something like control. He’d managed to get up on his hands and knees again and had even done it on the garden path rather than in the violets.

“Body isn’t working,” he groaned out as Dr. Jhandir tried to load him onto the gurney. His throat felt like he’d been trekking across the desert—and to be fair, he rarely drank anything, but it had never mattered before. 

One of his hands flailed out and smacked Dr. Jhandir square in the face.

“Yes, I see,” the doctor muttered darkly, in a tone that indicated he thought it was a purposeful attack. But he didn’t stop trying to move Oscar. Once Oscar was more-or-less lying on the gurney, Dr. Jhandir tightened its straps around him to fix him in place and stop any more errant limbs. Under the circumstances, having his arms and legs restrained should have been a relief, but it felt stifling, confining, as horrible a loss of control as the degradation itself.

“Too tight,” was all he managed to say about it.

Dr. Jhandir did not loosen the straps. “I’ll not have you hit me again. Whatever the matter is, I need to take precautions.”

Oscar still had enough control of his eyes to watch as Dr. Jhandir wheeled his gurney through a couple of fancy-looking hallways and into what appeared to be a surgery. The edges of the room were fuzzy in Oscar’s vision, but it didn’t look too dissimilar from a handful of doctor’s offices he’d visited while alive. He’d been half-expecting some chamber of horrors.

“I’m going to move you to the table,” Dr. Jhandir said. “Try not to struggle.”

Oscar tried his best, but it was mostly out of his control. At least he managed not to hit Dr. Jhandir again, but what should have been a simple transfer took several minutes thanks to Oscar’s uncontrollable limbs. Once he was on the table, Dr. Jhandir strapped him back down over his semi-verbal protests.

“I don’t care if it’s too tight. I can’t do anything for you if you’re flailing about like a madman. This will help, I believe.” 

Dr. Jhandir injected him in the neck with something—he felt the sting of the needle—and Oscar started feeling sleepy for the first time since he’d risen from the dead. His limbs stilled, though his vision only got cloudier. Probably some sort of sedative, then? But it didn’t knock him out, despite his sudden tiredness. Though his vision was foggy, Oscar could make out Dr. Jhandir leaning over him, frowning.

“I need to look at your heart,” the doctor continued, his expression lightening into something terrible. “Do let me know if it hurts—it will be fascinating to find out whether your kind can feel pain.”

Oscar wanted to protest, but his arms wouldn’t move and his mouth wouldn’t work. It didn’t exactly _hurt_ when Dr. Jhandir’s scalpel sliced down his chest. The sensation was more psychologically than physically unpleasant: The realization that he was awake while his skin was splitting, and that it barely felt like anything. Hell, he didn’t realize Dr. Jhandir had pulled the skin back until he felt it get pinned into place. He would have winced at the sound of his ribs being cut, if he was capable of wincing, but that didn’t hurt either. Oscar thought that maybe it would have been better if it had.

He did feel a jolt of _something_ when the doctor touched his heart, beyond the horrible feeling of knowing that Dr. Jhandir, of all goddamn people, had a hand inside his chest while he was completely vulnerable. And all the while, Dr. Jhandir was staring at him with that awful, hungry look, like he was just waiting for Oscar to register that everything hurt.

“Are you all right?” he asked, in an awful tone that matched his expression. Oscar couldn’t answer, of course, which Dr. Jhandir took as assent. “There’s something wrong with your heart. I might have to dissemble it, and I haven’t studied mechanicals enough to know what that will do to you. But listen closely: If you die again, it’s temporary. _I will bring you back._ You have my word.”

As though he trusted Dr. Jhandir’s word! If Oscar could have scoffed, he would have. The horrible crawling sensation of his heart being handled returned, and he considered that a swift death might be merciful. He’d come here hoping Dr. Jhandir could help him, but if not, better to just die and not even realize he’d passed on.

Dr. Jhandir started to pry up the outer shell of his heart, and Oscar thought that his skin might crawl off his body. His vision was swimming, but he could still see the doctor’s too-keen expression as his heart was prodded at and taken apart bit by bit. That face was the last thing he saw as he slipped into unconsciousness. _No, no, no_ , he thought. 

* * *

Whatever state of death he was in, it was similar to sleep in that, when he returned, he didn’t realize right away that time had passed. Dr. Jhandir was doing _something_ with his ribs again, and it was only the doctor’s look of concentration, rather than obscene fascination, that made him realize he had been, what—knocked out? Dead?

Oscar could feel his ribcage being put back into place and his skin and muscle being stitched back up over it with that same cold, painless horror he’d felt when Dr. Jhandir started the procedure. Dr. Jhandir was so intent on his work that if he noticed that Oscar had woken up, he didn’t acknowledge it.

Aside from the surreal feeling of the surgery, though, Oscar felt better than he had in months. There was no creeping blackness around the edges of his vision, and his limbs felt normal aside from being strapped to a table. Now that he felt like himself again, the weight of the straps around his wrists was horrible. He tried to thrash, but he was held too securely.

His fruitless escape attempt did draw Dr. Jhandir’s attention, though. The doctor looked far too pleased to see him squirming against the restraints.

“Ah, you’re back. You see, I kept my word! How do you feel?”

“Better. Thank you,” he added after a moment, though it galled him to say it. Then, faster, “You can let me up now.”

Dr. Jhandir smiled, and Oscar feared that he’d be left trapped here, subject to whatever other experiments Dr. Jhandir wanted to perform. He was struggling again by the time the doctor moved to unstrap him.

“Stop that at once, or I’ll leave you there,” Dr. Jhandir threatened. Any gratefulness Oscar felt toward him was evaporating quickly, even when he began loosening the straps.

Oscar swung himself into a sitting position as soon as he was able and slid off the table the moment his legs were free. He felt like himself again—the post-death version of himself, at least. 

Dr. Jhandir’s hand closed around his bicep. “Wait. You don’t have to leave. Think of everything I could discover if you stayed here! No one has had the opportunity to examine a reanimated mechanical this far into its existence.”

Instead of responding, Oscar wrenched his arm away. The thought of letting Dr. Jhandir operate on him in anything but the direst of circumstances made him shudder. Dr. Jhandir’s expression turned cold.

“On second thought, I’m not sure I should give you a choice.”

That was the final straw. Oscar reached toward Dr. Jhandir’s neck. He didn’t want to kill the smaller man, just scare him enough that he’d be too frightened to intrude in Oscar’s business unasked-for. But Oscar found that his hand stopped a good foot away from the doctor’s throat. Dr. Jhandir smiled cruelly.

“Yes, I thought you might try something like this. You’ll try in vain, I’m afraid. I may not have Lady Sterling’s control apparatus, but with physical access to your central mechanism, I could at least stop you from harming me. So put it out of your mind and lay back down.”

Oscar did not, would not. He felt a pit forming inside his chest at the thought that Dr. Jhandir had controlled him again, after he’d come here for help. He retracted his arm, to spare himself the horror of trying and failing to threaten the doctor.

Instead, he burst out of the surgery and ran through the house, searching for the door he was wheeled in through. If he’d been in his right mind (if he hadn’t been in such a state when Dr. Jhandir brought him in), the house—a normal, posh place—probably wouldn’t seem so labyrinthine. Oscar eventually found the back door, and blessedly, it was still dark outside, so there was no one to see him scale Dr. Jhandir’s fence. It wasn’t electrified at the moment, but if it had been, Oscar would have grasped it and died. He needed to get away.

Once he was free of the oppressive cleanness and green space of Dr. Jhandir’s neighborhood, Oscar slowed down. He felt good, physically, but he couldn’t shake his conviction that going to the doctor for help had been a terrible mistake.


End file.
